What case discussions reveal about teacher thinking

Drawing on sociocultural theories, this qualitative study examined teacher thinking during case discussions in two university content literacy courses. The participants were 30 students in an undergraduate preservice course and 10 practicing teachers in an inservice course at the Masters' level. Data took the form of transcripts of case discussions and debriefing sessions, field notes, focus-group interviews, and individual interviews. Our purpose was to understand the sociocultural and semiotic tools preservice and inservice teachers used to mediate and construct images and issues of teaching and learning literacy. Both differences and similarities were found between the two groups of teachers. First, the tools used by the preservice teachers included their experience as students, theory and course texts from university classes, and role-playing activities used during case discussions; in contrast, the inservice teachers drew predominantly on their teaching experience and consequently became emotionally involved in the cases. Second, both groups viewed teaching as a technical act. However, because the inservice teachers were more aware of the constraints that limited teachers' actions, their images of teaching were far more complex than those of the preservice teachers. Third, both groups were concerned about the diversity of students' needs and abilities and viewed knowledge and ability as “fixed.” Also interesting is what teachers did not talk about—issues of ethnicity, class, or gender were never raised. In addition, teachers did not question the school curriculum or their assumptions about teaching, knowledge, and ability. Thus, although we found that case teaching has the potential to help teachers reflect on practice and explore important issues in teaching, we argue that cases and case discussions must be carefully crafted as tools to highlight and challenge these assumptions.